Winter festival participants will salute the sun at dawn

Tomorrow morning, just before dawn, a parade of students, staff and faculty will journey to Promontory Point in an effort to coax the sun to appear.

By the lakeshore, they will perform the annual yoga ritual known as Suryanamaskar, or “salute to the sun.”

Jean Treese, Associate Dean of Students in the College, will lead the ritual, a 17-year-old tradition that is part of Chicago’s Winterfest.

The sun has appeared only three times in the festival’s history.

The salute to the sun is the culmination of a week’s worth of early morning calisthenics based on the samurai concept kangeiko, meaning “winter training.”

This year’s Winterfest also included Kuviasungnerk. An Eskimo word meaning “happy times,” Kuviasungnerk embraced the cold with five days of unique winter events, including a frosty luau complete with leis and Hawaiian music in Hutchinson Courtyard and the annual Polar Bear Run of swimsuit-clad students racing across the Main Quadrangle.

Winterfest will conclude Saturday with an International Food Festival from 8 p.m. to midnight in Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St.